Arithmetic and MPs' expenses

Janet Anderson, MP for Rossendale and Darwen, claimed the highest amount in car mileage during 2005-06, amounting to £16,612. On the basis that an MP is allowed to claim a generous 40p per mile for the first 10,000 miles, and thereafter 25p per mile, my O-grade arithmetic has enabled me to calculate that Ms Anderson claimed a total mileage during the year of 62,488 miles.

62,488 miles per year amounts to over 5,000 miles per month or say between 1100 and 1200 miles per week. Ms Anderson lives in Darwen in Lancashire. Accordingly, in order to justify her mileage claims, she would have needed to travel to London and back three times a week during the parliamentary session (allowing for the generous holidays which MPs have and assuming that the distance from Darwen to London is about 250-300 miles). According to her e-politix website (here), Ms Anderson holds 8 constituency surgeries per month but they all seem to be at the weekend.

According to Adam Boulton of Sky News (here), Ms Anderson has an X-reg Ford Focus with 140,000 miles on the clock. I would suggest that Mr Boulton may have got it wrong, however, as the kind of annual mileage done by Ms Anderson would indicate that her car is less than three years old - which is a bit recent for an X-reg. Indeed, any one who thrashes a car by doing more than 60,000 miles per year could not expect a car to last much more than three years.

I should stress that I am not making any accusations here. But it is interesting to look at the arithmetic. We should nevertheless remember that Ms Anderson is after all an honourable member of the House of Commons. I should be grateful if anyone wishing to comment would bear this is mind.


Postscript:

While we're on the subject of Mr Boulton, I did not quite follow this piece of logic with regard to Mr Eric Joyce, MP for Falkirk:

"Scottish MPs tell me Joyce flies more because he and his family live in London rather than his constituency, which means more trips to and from Scotland than colleagues."